


If tomorrow starts without me

by allandmore



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: A little bit of cheese for good measure, Character Study, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Love, M/M, Nile and Andy are the best support system, One-Shot, Swearing, Vulnerable Nicky, protective Joe, this is a bit of a ramble really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26283559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allandmore/pseuds/allandmore
Summary: One-shot. "Many things are worse than dying for Nicky, but nothing is worse than watching Joe die. And yesterday, Joe died twenty-seven times, and he’s acting like it’s nothing."Nile, Andy and Joe rally to help Nicky after a mission goes wrong.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 40
Kudos: 545





	If tomorrow starts without me

There is a lot Nile does not know about Nicky and Joe. 

She has come to know parts of them, in feelings and colours and deeds. She knows that Nicky is profoundly good _,_ with his honey-tongue and gentle hands, hands that would cradle a broken-winged bird, that would bring water to the lips of those dying from thirst. But she does not know how many lives have been lost at those hands, hands that could snap a neck, or thrust a sword into a ribcage.

She knows that Joe is full of warmth and ease, passionate as a summer storm. She knows of his loyalty, of his intensely protective nature, and she knows of his love. But she does not know the ghosts of his past, or what lies behind the anger she sometimes sees in his face, rich and charged and dangerous.

She does not know what’s happened in Salvador, but she knows something is wrong when they return to the safe house, too late into the night, and too bloody. Joe’s t-shirt is barely fabric anymore, and, though Nicky’s clothing remains intact, the blood on his hands, beneath his fingernails, splashed on his face, suggests something has gone badly awry. 

“What the hell happened?” Andy greets them before Nile even realises they’re back. She strides forward, reaching to pull something - bone, perhaps - out of Joe’s hair. “It was meant to be an intel job, not a massacre.”

“Things got...complicated,” Joe drops his bag on the floor, squeezing Andy’s forearm, before sweeping Nile into a hug so tight and so warm it feels as though he hasn’t seen her in years, let alone a few days. “How are you, sunshine?”

“God, get off me,” Nile pushes him away, what’s left of his shirt stiff with blood. “What were you doing, animal sacrifice?”

“Something like that,” Joe chuckles. “Have fun without us?”

Nile rolls her eyes. “Something like that.”

Joe grins and turns back to Nicky. His smile falters, for a moment. Nicky is leaning against the door frame, deep circles beneath his eyes, and there’s something else, something off, in the way he doesn’t meet Joe’s.

“How complicated is complicated?” Andy asks, gaze flickering between the two of them.

There’s a long pause in which Joe stares at Nicky and Nicky stares at the floor. 

“Tomorrow, Andy.” Nicky’s voice is hoarse. “Sleep first.”

His tone must tell Andy not to push the issue, because she doesn’t. “Shower first,” she says, running a hand down Nicky’s arm. “Then sleep.”

Nicky nods, too tired to protest, or care, Nile’s not sure. 

  
  
  


Nile is getting used to how the others sleep. Andy lies so still she’s almost lifeless, one arm slung over her eyes, ready to grab her weapons, always close at hand. Booker would sleep on any surface he could find (with a bottle nearby, most likely) even if it was the floor, and Nicky and Joe always sleep as one. Nile knows this. Nile’s come to expect this, how they interlock so naturally, Joe’s body moulding itself to Nicky’s, their legs entwined like the roots of a tree.

Nile sleeps in fits and starts mostly, dreaming of her parents, of Booker, flashes of Quynh and that dark, furious water. It is not unusual for her to wake in the night, heart racing. But it is unusual to wake and see that Joe sleeps alone, his body curved around an empty space. 

Nile stretches her shoulders as she swings her legs around, creeping out of the room as lightly as possible so as not to wake Andy (who has been known to wake guns blazing at the slightest noise).

Nicky stands outside silhouetted by the stars. He senses her before she’s stepped out the door, turning his head to the side. “Another dream?” 

Nile wraps her arms around herself, hopping on the cobbled stone to get to his side. The stone is cold beneath her feet “Yeah.”

“Quynh?”

“No, actually. It was about Booker.”

“Booker?” Nicky frowns. “But you’ve met.”

“Not a vision, a real dream. I dreamt he was drowning too, like Quynh. Trapped in the dark. Hands at his throat.” Nile shivers. “I’ve got a shitty subconscious, right?”

A cicada chirps in the distance. A street lamp flickers.

  
“A concerned subconscious, I think,” Nicky says. Half his face shaded by the night but Nile can see his downturned lips, the angle of his brow. “Maybe he is trapped, in a way.”

There is an unsaid _maybe we all are._ Nile bites her lip. She did have Nicky locked in as the comforter of the group, the wiseman, steady and statuesque and strong in his truth, in his passions. Then again, every pillar has its cracks, and though he may be old and experienced, Nicky is not inhuman.

She wonders if she should ask Nicky what’s wrong. Part of her hopes, perhaps naively, that he’ll trust her enough to share what’s clearly bothering him.

“Did you have a dream too?”

“No, no. I am still full of adrenaline, I think.” Nicky does not let her explore too deeply, waving his hand in the air as though to wash her worry away. “Do you dream about Booker often?”

“Not often, no, but I do think about him.” There is something about Nicky that draws more truth than she intends to tell. “I...I dream about my father more, lately.”

“Oh?”

“Good dreams, not drowning.”

“Tell me about him.” There is nothing obtrusive about the way Nicky asks this. He stands there, with constellations in his eyes and a softness on his face that says, in this moment, this is the only thing he wants to hear about. She remembers the first time he looked at her like this after she had dreamt of Quynh, so intensely, so concerned, that she had felt she’d never trusted anyone more. “He died in combat, no?” 

“When I was eleven.”

“He was a good man?”

“The best. From what I can remember, anyway. Didn’t shy away from teaching me how to defend myself, or stand up for what I believed in.”

“Good. He did well.”

“And he was always laughing, he had,” Nile can’t help but laugh. She gestures with her fingers. “This big, spirited grin, kind of like Joe’s, that made everyone happy just to look at him.”

Nicky is smiling too now, eyes sparkling. “Sounds like you.”

“Maybe,” Nile shuffles her feet, her toes numb. “Losing him really left a hole, you know. It was like none of us could ever smile again because we’d just...think of him. I hope…” she bites her lip. “I hope...it’s not like that for them, this time.”

Nicky nudges her with his arm, ever so gently. “It will be, _sorella._ I will not lie. It will be hard for them to lose you. Especially in the same way.”

A cat howls somewhere in the distance, crescendoing in time with a siren that starts up on a different block. Cidade Nova comes alive at night through cacophony, and it’s somewhat comforting to be surrounded by noise.

“I still get sad, sometimes. About him.”

“Of course you do.”

“But I’ll forget them, eventually, won’t I? I’ll forget feeling like...this?”

“Would you want to?”

  
“I think so,” Nile feels heat behind her eyes, and turns slightly, digging her nails into the palm on her right hand instead. “It’s easier, isn’t it? To forget.”

“Perhaps.” Nicky takes a breath and it’s like he’s inhaling the sky, mixing the galaxy with his thoughts. “But grief gives death impact, don’t you think? Without it, we forget what death is _._ ”  
  
  


Tomorrow comes around in a wash of rain, the dark clouds ripe and fragile in the sky. Nile wakes to the sound of patter on the tin roof, and, beneath it, arguing. 

It’s not like arguing she was used to back home - say, when she decided to enlist, and her mother tore open the earth with her rage - no, this arguing is soft and rapid and rhythmic, like a dance, but arguing nonetheless.

Nicky stands in the kitchen, his skin showing no sign of the violence from the night before, though he looks tired. Ruffled. He busies himself with pots and pans as Joe talks to him - at him, perhaps - in their mix of Italian and Arabic. Joe is waxing in his low, dulcet tones, and every now and then Nicky will say something short, throw the words over his shoulder casually, like the tea towel he wears, and Joe’s frown will deepen. 

They grow louder as the rain does, and though Nile doesn’t want to intrude, watching them off-kilter like this is like having a broken bone that reheals out of line. 

They stop when she walks in. Joe’s frown instantly morphs into a smile, though his mug of coffee is clutched tightly in his hands. “Ah, morning.” His eyes glint at the sight of her messy hair. “Rough night?”

“Not as rough as yours,” Nile scoots onto one of the chairs at the table. “I just battled my bedsheets.”

“A formidable opponent.” Joe sits opposite her, resting his elbows on the table. He looks past Nile’s shoulder as Nicky starts chopping tomatoes, his knife work lining with the sound of the rain. 

“Need help, my love?”

There’s a pause as the chopping slows. Then, quietly - 

“No, _bello_. You rest.”

  
Joe’s gaze is as soft as Nicky’s voice, so perhaps Nile was wrong. This in particular, she does not understand about Nicky and Joe. How the two can go from one place to another so _quickly_ , though they have had more ten centuries to practice. Or perhaps they weren’t arguing after all.

Joe nods towards the pack of cards on the table. “You and Andy play Patience last night?”

“Go fish.”

“She let you win?”

“Not once.”

“Typical.”

Andy returns from her morning run soon after Nile and Joe finish a vicious game of Snap. Nicky is cooking something far too elaborate for breakfast, and Nile gets the sense he just wants to keep busy. 

“Jesus, I’d forgotten what cramp feels like,” Andy plants herself at the table, reaching down to rub at her calf. Water drips from her clothes, but she doesn’t seem to care. “Smells good, Nicky.”

Joe grins. “And what does cramp feel like?”

“Shit.”

  
“I feel like shit too, so that makes two of us.”

“You’ve got no excuse, you still heal.”

“No sympathy.” Joe sighs, dramatically. “What did I expect?”

“You know you only get sympathy on special occasions.”

“Oh? What occasions are those?”

Andy thinks for a moment. “When you get poisoned, beheaded, or eviscerated, if I can recall correctly.”

“Why poisoned?” Nile asks. “Wouldn’t that be quick?”

“Oh no,” Joe grimaces. “Booker once encountered a nasty dose of ricin in his youth. His body was trying to heal as the poison was trying to kill him, it was just...repairing and decaying for _hours._ Pure agony. _”_

Nile shivers. “Poor Booker.”

“So no sympathy worthy deaths yesterday then?” Andy asks, leaning back in her chair. It is an Andy like way of getting straight down to business. 

“Ah,” Joe rubs the back of his neck. “Not exactly - ”

“Wasn’t it meant to be an in-out gig?”

“Well, I did die twenty-two times, so I suppose I was...in and out quite a lot.” 

Joe says it like it’s nothing, with a slightly sheepish grin. Says it as he takes another sip of his coffee - dark, bitter, no milk. 

Nile drops the spoon she’d been stirring her tea with. It clatters on the table. The noise in the kitchen behind them stops.

“You _what?_ ” she says, at the same time Andy says, “what the hell, Joe, are you serious?”

Joe raises his hands. “I told you, things didn’t exactly go to plan.”

“No shit!”

All Nile knows is that It was meant to be an intel job. A stealth mission of sorts, to gather evidence on a human trafficking ring working out of Salvador. The boys would bring their information back - numbers of smugglers, their access to artillery, where they were going, how many targets they were after. Then the four of them would decide on how to take down the unit, while also finding out who their buyers were. Simple. No violence or dying involved. Or so they thought.

Joe’s fingers pick at the wood of the table. “We underestimated their surveillance, that’s all.”

“That’s _all -_ ”

“They spotted us before we spotted them. Shot me in the head, no warning. Watched me come back. Then it all went to hell, boss.”

“Right, and they killed you twenty-two times for what? For _fun_?” 

Andy is not good at hiding her anger, even after all these thousands of years, and that’s something Nile loves about her. She’s still human, she makes Nile feel sane for wanting to jump in the car and drive to wherever these shitheads are - 

“Pretty much, while they tried to figure out how much money we could fetch on the market.”

Andy raises her eyebrows. “Well did they figure it out?”

Joe laughs. “What, you want to try it out? It’s Insultingly less than expected, though there weren't a lot of previous cases to base the estimate on - ”

“How’d you get away?” Nile asks, not quite able to bring herself to ask the question that’s becoming ingrained in her psyche as a soldier - _did you leave any loose ends?_

“A little good luck, more than anything,” Joe runs a hand through his hair, his eyes flicking over Nile’s head. “And Nicky’s deftness with his hands.”

“Shit,” Andy shakes her head. “I suppose we don’t need to go back and finish them off?”

“All done on that front, boss. But we didn't get what we really wanted, to find out who they were working for. It was all too messed up, sorry Andy.”

"Doesn't matter," Andy waves him away. "We'll figure it out. Together, next time."

Joe grunts, in protest or agreement Nile's not sure. She knows Joe and Andy and Nicky have died _many_ times. She knows it is not uncommon to die many times in one day, even, but twenty-two is an awful lot, and the thought of all that pain condensed makes Nile want to throw up.

“Twenty-seven,” Nicky says from behind them. Nile jumps slightly, having almost forgotten he was there.

They all turn to look at him, his eyes dark, a rarely seen expression on his face, deep-set and furious. Joe frowns back at him. “What, love?”

“It was twenty-seven times you died,” Nicky says, placing an overflowing plate on the table.

“Was it?”

“Yes, I counted.” Nicky takes the towel off his shoulder and tosses it on the bench. He gestures at the food - tomatoes, cheeses, handmade focaccia, eggs - and gives a quick smile in Nile’s direction. “Please, eat.”

But Nicky does not stay. Joe and Andy remain still, their eyes following Nicky as he leaves the room. Nobody touches the food.

Andy presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Joe, how many times did they kill Nicky?”

Joe doesn’t answer for a moment. Then, “four times too many.”

“ _Joe.”_

“What? I prefer it this way. I’d rather die a thousand times than let him die once, you know that.”

“Yes, we do know that, and you know perfectly well he feels the same.” Andy shakes her head, looking longingly at the food sitting untouched on the plate. She gives Joe a _look_ \- which Nile doesn’t quite understand - before pushing out her chair with a meaningful scrape. “I’ll check on him.”

“Thank you, _ukht._ ”

All of a sudden, Joe looks tired. He picks up a fork and then drops it again, folding his face into his hands with a groan. “I did not _want_ to die. I did not want him to watch.”

“I know,” Nile kicks her foot into his knee beneath the table. She hesitates. “You must feel like shit, dying that many times... I can’t even...”

“Thank you,” Joe peers between his fingers at her with his gentle eyes. “It was not nice. I still have a deadly headache and my throat feels like I've been inhaling smoke all night. Worse than all, Nicky is mad at me.”

Nile’s affection for Joe surges and she lets out a snort, reminded of how her brother had reacted when he upset his girlfriend: the end of the earth would come second to her spite. Yet this is entirely different, they’re talking death, a whole lot of pain, and men who have loved lifetimes over. “Worse than _all?_ ”

“Of course.”

“He’s not angry at you though, is he? More at the people that killed you.” 

“He is hurt,” Joe sighs. “Deeply. So I am hurt.”

“How do you two...bear it? Normally, I mean.” 

Joe takes his hands away from his face, leaning his chin on his fist instead. “What, dying?”

“No, watching each _other_ die. It must have happened so much.”

“Yes, though it is not something you can get used to, I will tell you that.” He contemplates for a moment, rolling his words on his tongue, as though testing the weight of them before delivery. “It is our curse, that is true. But it is our gift to share the moments between death with one another. That’s how I bear it. I know it will end and I can hold him again.” 

“Right, that’s...sweet,” Nile resists the urge to smile at Joe’s newly donned (and very pensive) frown. She approaches her next question with what she hopes is a little tact. “And how does _Nicky_ bear it?”

“Nicky holds on to my pain more than I do. He has always been more...” Joe grimaces. “Empathetic. He loves so wholly, everyone, everything, but that means he mourns so fully too.”

“Oh, I can so see that.”

Joe nods. “He has centuries worth of sorrow in his heart, but still he chooses to love, no matter what pain that love brings him.”

Nile nods, as though she understands the lives they have both lived, together, and apart. As though she will ever fully understand. Perhaps with time. For now, she tries to think of something comforting to say, something wise, channelling her inner Nicky. “I think the joy your love brings him outweighs the pain though, right? Eventually. He just needs time to process. We all do.”

Joe looks at her like she has just spouted a shakespearean sonnet. His eyes crinkle like the lines on a map, smile broad. “Aish, we do not deserve you, _amira_.”

Nile grins back. “Damn straight.”

* * *

For Nicky, there are things worse than dying. Say, watching Nile when she thinks she’s alone, holding her phone in her hand so tightly it might break, a picture of her family bright on the screen - 

Say, the way Andy finds it harder to get up in the morning, how she bruises all over now, yellow and brown, or deep and purple like blackberry wine -

Say, the lashes he took, oh so many years ago, his arms tied tight to a steak, prayers to his God unanswered as the wounds on his back healed and reopened and healed, going unnoticed beneath a layer of blood - 

Say, waking up in a box beneath the earth, so tight his back and nose touched wood at the same time, with only enough airflow _just_ to keep him alive, awake, aware - 

There are things worse than dying. Worse than the sudden nothingness, than the slow, rewind as his body claws back into place. Than the seconds of dizzying disorientation when he wakes, where he forgets who he is, where he is, how he is ( _until he sees those eyes, deep and dark and holy -)._

Many things are worse than dying, yes. 

But nothing is worse than watching Joe die.

And yesterday, Joe died twenty-seven times, and he’s acting like it’s nothing.

“Nicky?”

Andy finds him in the garden sitting on the cobbled fence that surrounds the house, letting the rain - gentle now - fall on his skin. He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the sky. “You are not eating.”

“Oh I will, don’t you worry.” Andy sits next to him, their shoulders touching. She nudges him. “You okay?”

They took turns shooting Joe. In the head, in the heart _(oh, cuore mio),_ playing like a cat with a bird it doesn’t want to eat. When they got bored with that, they tried knives, in his throat, beneath his ribs, taking bets how long it would take for him to wake again - 

“I’m fine.”

All the while Nicky knelt on the cold floor, praying to a god he hasn’t believed in for half a millennia, _kill me instead, please._

“You’re a shit liar.”

“I _will_ _be_ fine, then. That is not a lie.”

They kicked at Joe’s lifeless form, pulled his hair, danced over him like a sideshow. Nicky tried to struggle against his bindings, but the chains were tight, the cloth in his mouth muffling any cry of protest. _S_ ome, deranged part of him wondered if that was his purgatory, if maybe his eternal punishment, the price of immortality was not birds devouring his liver as for Prometheus, but watching the man he loved die over and _over -_

“You don’t have to be.”

Each time he awoke, Joe had sat up and looked at Nicky with a smile _._ A bloodied, devil-may-care smile that said _I can do this all day,_ but did he not see that Nicky could not return that smile? Because he couldn’t, he couldn’t watch for what felt like eternity - 

“Nicky? You hear me? You don’t have to be fine, okay. Just because we’ve had centuries of practice doesn’t mean you have to be fine. You’re still human, right? Who watches their soulmate die thirty times and be fine?”

One man had grabbed Joe’s hair and yanked his head back, holding the blade of his knife just above Joe’s eye. Joe bared his teeth in a snarl, flashing like the blade as it plunged. He had yelled a guttural, primal yell, and it went on, and _on_ , it was the Philistines and Samson and Nicky was breaking, shattering like stained glass, all jaggard and sacred, the light of his soul splitting in all directions - 

“Talk to me, Nicky.”

Nicky couldn’t save Joe, not like Joe has saved him so many countless times. He had closed his eyes. He was in a box, suffocating. He was on a post, beneath the lash. Beneath the sea, the water filling his ears and lungs. He was on the battlefield, looking at those eyes, dark and, and -

There is a fear in him, like a disease, that has resurfaced slowly since he saw Andromache bleed. Before, so calm in his faith of destiny, _if it is time it’s time_. If it is his fate, he is fine with it, but not others. Because they all still had time, right? That’s what eased the fear, but not anymore.

Yet, how can he say these things to Andy? _I worried every fall would be his last. I worried my goodbye was not one of intention. I worried -_

“What’s it like to feel vulnerable again, Andy?” Nicky asks, opening his eyes. If Andy notices the rain intermingling with a tear, she does not say.

“Something like this, I imagine.”

"I do not like it."

"No, I don't imagine you do."

“It will pass,” Nicky says. “As all passes.”

“That doesn't mean you’re not allowed to feel it,” Andy says. She reaches down and clasps Nicky’s hand, tightly, and they sit there, together, feeling more than the gentle rain. 

* * *

“ _Ya hayati?_ ” 

It is a nickname Joe saves only for the rare occasions which he has pissed Nicky off. 

And Joe knows he has pissed Nicky off because the small talk at breakfast was _unbearable._

Andy and Nicky had come in from outside with a simple: _oh wow, It’s getting heavy out there_ , as though nothing had happened, and the conversation about the weather had spiralled and expanded to fill the gaps in which Joe just wanted to say _look at me, please_ , because there was nothing worse than the man he loved avoiding his gaze. 

But no, he had to sit through excruciating conversation about the weather which nobody wanted to be a part of, before Nile offered to go and do laundry and Andy made some excuse about calling Coppley to fill him in on what went down.

Nicky stands and starts gathering the dishes.

“Don’t, love, please,” Joe clutches at Nicky’s wrist, bringing it to his lips, gently.

Nicky tries to shake him off. “I’m alright, Joe - ”

Joe does not let go. He kisses Nicky’s forearm, the crook of his elbow, his shoulder, using him to rise to his feet. Joe’s hands come up on either side of Nicky’s face. “I would take it all again if it means you staying unharmed, my heart, you know that?”

“Stop,” Nicky closes his eyes, brings his hands up to Joe’s wrists to push him away, gently. “ _Stop_. I do not want you to die for me. I do not want you to _die_ at all _._ ”

“It wasn’t _for_ you, this time, particularly.” Joe says, though it is a lie, and Nicky knows it’s a lie. “They just found me more annoying.”

“You made yourself more annoying. You made yourself the target!”

“It’s a natural instinct!”

“Twenty-seven times, you just got to _die._ ”

“ _Just?_ ”

“Dying is not the hard part!” Nicky is not-quite yelling, but his words are dripping, white hot. “Watching is the hard part.”

“ _Bello -_ ”

“I closed my eyes last night and I see your shattered body, your vacant eyes, not knowing whether or not they will stay that way. All you see is darkness! You close your eyes and you sleep well. You snore, even.”

“You know perfectly well I do not snore, It must have been An - ” Joe stops himself at Nicky’s narrowing eyes, bites down on his tongue. “My love, I feel your pain as you do mine. How do I help you?”

Nicky looks at him with those eyes, full of clouds today and wild shores. Joe feels his chest tighten, the breath from his throat gone, as it always does when Nicky stares at him with such resolve. “Kill me.”

The air rushes back and Joe chokes on it. “ _What_?”

“Twenty-seven times. Kill me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We are uneven,” Nicky says, rapidly, as though giving voice to an unbidden thought that needs to enter this world and vanish as soon as possible. “If you die a thousand times, are you not closer to your real death than I? Will you not take your last breath while I still have a thousand left to go? That is not protecting me. How could I... _endure_...?”

Something like understanding dawns inside Joe, blooming through him, ink down lines of water: of course. This is not _just_ about yesterday. This is about Andy. And Booker. This is about Merrick and the lab. This is about Nile and her family. This is about being alone. 

Andy’s mortality shook them all, and yet it seems to have struck to Nicky’s very core, molten and unforgiving and _somehow,_ Joe had not noticed the tremors this had caused in Nicky's well-formed world. A world which - despite the turbulence of their lives - had been stable in one thing: his family, for the last two hundred years at least. And two hundred years is a long enough time to get settled. Now, changes piled in the last year alone - a new sister, Booker’s betrayal, Andy’s mortality - have rocked an otherwise steady heart. 

“ _Niccolo_.” Joe cups Nicky’s chin in his hand, runs his thumb down the side of his jaw. “You know that’s not how this works.”

“But _how_ do we know?” Nicky shakes him loose. “We both died the first time, together. How do we know it hasn’t all been a countdown?”

“Nothing lives forever _._ ”

“Don’t _say_ that - ” 

“But you are the one that says it. All the time, about Andromache - ”

“It’s _different_.”

“How? We came to terms with our own mortality many moons ago. ”

“Because...I’m...I’m not done,” It’s both a hiss and a sob, and Nicky’s hands fall on Joe’s chest. “I’m not done loving you! Or them, or trying to fix this wretched world. But if you die before me, really _die_...I am not as strong as Andromache, or Booker.” His hands tighten on the fabric of Joe’s shirt. “I cannot walk here alone.”

“You will _never_ have to,” though Joe can’t truly promise this, the words do not feel like a lie. He reaches up, wraps his hands around Nicky’s, prizes them away from his shirt. He locks his fingers with him, tightly. “If one day, I start bleeding and don’t stop, you can wrap me in bubble wrap and I will never leave the house again. I will give up fighting. I will take up…Gardening? Crochet? Oh, I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the harp!”

Nicky laughs, a burst of light in a room that had lost a couple of shades. “Or you could paint.”

“Yes, my love, I will paint.” Joe kisses him on the forehead and Nicky does not pull away. “I will paint you over and over.”

“Yes. No one dies while painting.”

“Well, except for that strange time when people were painting with arsenic-”

“Be quiet, Joe.”

They stand, staring at one another for a moment. Then Nicky is against Joe’s chest and Joe is wrapping him so tightly there are no distinguishable lines between their forms. It is an embrace that could extend on forever, and Joe is perfectly happy to let it do so. 

“I will not kill you.” Joe murmurs, reaching to stroke the back of Nicky’s head. “It will not make you feel better.”

“That’s fair.”

“Do not go throwing yourself in front of me during missions, either. You have been a martyr in enough lifetimes. I will not permit it.”

“ _Permit_ it - ?”

“Never.”

“How about we just say no more missions for a while,” Nicky looks up at him, and he looks tired, a tired that makes Joe’s bones feel weary, a tired that says, _I have lived another thousand years in the past few months_. Joe understands. “I have had enough blood for a while.”

“Alright. Unless they’re missions to, say, rescue drowning kittens. ”

“That I’ll accept.”

Joe chuckles and pulls back, gently. Presses their foreheads together. Breathes in Nicky’s scent - today, sandalwood and fresh mint. Joe leans in, slowly at first, like the spell of the moon a hesitant tide. His hand finds the back of Nicky’s neck, lips hovering, only hovering - 

Nicky grabs his collar and, without hesitation, brings their lips together. He tastes of honey and poetry - there’s no Joe, no Nicky, no noise, no death, no immortality, just music and light and Joe's heart in his throat, warmth exploding -

Then Nicky pulls away, and clouds return to cover the sun. “I’m sorry. It was not your fault, I should not have been mad.”

“Nothing to forgive.”

“More I was mad at the world, I think."

"Yesterday was torture for you, I understand."

"For us both,” Nicky reaches up, shifts Joe’s curls. “You must still be in pain.”

“Yes, my love.” Joe presses his forehead to Nicky’s once more, not wanting to think all that much more about yesterday at all. “But I’ll be alright.”

“We all will," Nicky leans into him, and says, quietly, "but we don't have to be."

* * *


End file.
